Scanning technology is moving far beyond the laser-scanned barcodes you've become familiar with at grocery stores, gyms, and concerts. In fact, you're likely using or benefiting from next-generation RFID and QR codes right now. The NFL used RFID in 2015 to provide what it calls "Next Gen Stats" for every player on the field.1 Your own business could be using this scanning technology to boost your bottom line, attract customers, control inventory, and more.
While RFID, QR codes, and barcodes are all ways to communicate information in a way that machines can quickly and easily understand, there are key differences between each. Here's what these technologies are, how they work, and how you can take advantage of them.
Make Your Online Marketing a "Local"
Most of our clients are geographically local to Ithaca and Tompkins County. So our marketing, advertising, and promotions are local. Local can also mean targeted marketing to a specific audience regardless of their physical location. Here are some steps to take to position your marketing to fit your local market regardless of what local may mean to you.
If you operate a "local business" (meaning one that gets most of its customers from your local area), don't overlook the Internet as an important way to attract new customers and stay top of mind with existing customers or past customers.
According to Google research, having good online information gets more people to shop in brick-and-mortar stores and businesses.
For local businesses, there are some specific steps to take to make sure that your business can be found by searchers in your geographical area. Because after all, you want local shoppers. So being found by local searchers is the name of the game for you — not just Web visibility in general.
Fundamental Aspects of Internet Marketing
So, you've decided to take the plunge and run an Internet marketing campaign. It can be targeted to a very select audience - hopefully an audience that's interested in your product or service. Here's some fundamentals regarding Internet marketing, what's important and what not to forget!
Effectively promoting and marketing a product, service, website, or brand online can be quite the challenge in today’s competitive environment, requiring a multi-faceted approach and a significant investment of at least time and effort.For companies that are serious about getting their brand name out there on the World Wide Web, paying an experienced team of experts to do all the hard work seems to make the most sense from an investing standpoint. Still, even with an extensive advertising budget, simply deciding what to invest in first can seem like a daunting task when you’re just starting a campaign from scratch.
This is why People Fear the Internet of Things
The "Internet of Things" (IoT) is a fast growing segment of all techonologies. Being able to connect to your home thermostat, remotely lock (or unlock) your front door or operate a surveillance camera in your home or office all are very intriguing. But like a lot of things - Danger Lurks!
The following article from "Krebs on Security" is fairly dense reading, but does a great job of describing many of the potential security issues surrounding the IoT. Like many issues involving Internet techologies, there are ways to do things right. Usually, they are not the easiest to implement and rarely are they inexpensive, however we caution all our clients to make sure that the fancy new gizmo that you want to add to your network doesn't inadvertantly create an enormous security hole!
Imagine buying an internet-enabled surveillance camera, network attached storage device, or home automation gizmo, only to find that it secretly and constantly phones home to a vast peer-to-peer (P2P) network run by the Chinese manufacturer of the hardware. Now imagine that the geek gear you bought doesn’t actually let you block this P2P communication without some serious networking expertise or hardware surgery that few users would attempt.
|
|||||||||||